“Whatever the outcome of the war, America has embarked upon a career of imperialism, both in world affairs and in every other aspect of her life, with all the opportunities, responsibilities, and perils which that implies.” Let me interrupt this quotation from Mr. Jordan to indicate that the opportunities are for him and the people he speaks to; the responsibilities and the perils, those are meant for us.
Mr. Jordan continued: “This war inevitably involves a vast revolution in the balance of political and economic power, not only internationally but internally. Even though by our aid England should emerge from this struggle without defeat, she will be so impoverished economically and crippled in prestige that it is improbable that she will be able to resume or maintain the dominant position in world affairs she has occupied so long. At best, England will become a junior partner in a new Anglo-Saxon imperialism, in which the economic resources and the military and naval strength of the United States will be the center of gravity. Southward in our hemisphere and westward in the Pacific the path of empire takes its way, and in modern terms of economic power as well as of political prestige, the sceptre passes to the United States.”
A fair answer to Mr. Jordan, who loves to talk of sceptres and masters, was made by Abraham Lincoln, who said: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the differences, is no democracy.” Now we can have it Jordan’s way and Truman’s way and Vandenberg’s way and Taft’s way, or we can have it Lincoln’s way. But let’s not pretend to ourselves and to the world that we can have it both ways simultaneously.
Mr. Jordan had echoes. Mr. Leo D. Welch, treasurer of Standard Oil of New Jersey, told a meeting of the National Foreign Trade Council on November 12, 1946, that we “must assume the responsibility of the majority stockholder in this corporation known as the world.” The world is our pie presumably, and Standard Oil is set for the carving.
Mr. Welch then proposed practical steps. “Private enterprise,” said he, by which he meant such exclusively private enterprises as Standard Oil, “must begin to evolve its foreign policy, starting with the most important contribution it can make—men in government.”
That operation is about over. Big business had moved into the White House. Its spokesmen are prominent in the Cabinet and in the State Department where the oil men hang their hats. President Truman, while showing the front door to labor and small business, has opened the back door (soon to be enlarged by a whole back porch to accommodate the crowd) to no less than fifty bankers, financiers, and industrialists who now staff our top-level government. Working with them are the brass, including thirty or more generals and admirals who were assisted by the President to readjust themselves.
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